Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Out-of-Body?

About six weeks ago, I listed four of my books with ACX, an audio site that used to be Audible.Now it’s an Amazon company and it’s dead easy to turn your written words into a listening experience.

If you really want to.

I’m pretty familiar with the spoken word.My mother was an actress.Her forte was community theater, but she did have a couple of parts in movies, enough so that she was a SAG member.

She and some of her friends also gathered a group of actors together and set up an interpretive reading ensemble.They called themselves The Readers’ Theater and did lots of gigs at local schools, trying to give kids an alternative to TV (and encouraging them to read).

For a very brief time, I was a member of the Readers’ Theater.The best use of my time was writing the newsletter and applying for grants, but I did a few performances.My painful shyness and fear of speaking in public was a drawback, though.

Fast forward to now, and I’m an author.I sit at my computer with only my old, lame cat for company and spend days in my fictional worlds. I found a way to communicate that doesn’t involve public speaking.

I like my worlds, particularly the one where the Kandesky vampires live.They’re uber-rich, urbane and sexy.I know what they look like and sound like, so it’s cinchy to imagine them in an audio form.

Well, not so much.It’s odd. It feels like an out-of-body experience. Suddenly, my words took on different meanings and had a life of their own, and I listened, thinking “Who wrote that?”

It’s not a bit bad. I contracted with an actor from Australia who used a slight accent, just enough to give my European vampires interest.And we communicated as he was producing it about pronunciation of names and places. It was a pleasant experience.

The first one, Plague: A Love Story, was finished yesterday. It should be available on the ACX site as an MP3 download in 10 days.And he’ll be reading a second book, Danube: A Tale of Murder, sometime in December.

I used to think I wanted to be a playwright.I’d stand at the back of a darkened theater, watching as an award-winning cast did my play.At the end, the entire audience would rise and over a cacophony of applause, they’d shout, “Author, Author”.

Not any more.I’ve found that I like the anonymity of my computer, my lame cat and my fictional worlds.

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